voidbournefandomcom-20200215-history
Superluminal Travel
Superluminal travel (also called "FTL") is the means by which all spacefaring civilizations control and communicate with their systems, and the backbone of the galactic and intergalactic community, commerce, trade, politics and warfare. Technical background Normally, baryonic matter in realspace obeys physical principles of relativity: it increases asymptotically in mass as it accelerates towards the speed of light, requiring more and more energy to approach it, but even at infinite values never being able to surpass the lightspeed threshold. However, the majority of the interstellar (and in some cases, intergalactic) sovereignties found in the Voidbourne universe have developed some method, many of them unique, of bypassing that barrier. History It is believed the first true hyperluminal systems were created by The First, a race which, as might be guessed, is the earliest known sentient form of life to create an interstellar empire. However, few to no traces of First technology remain, so their method of acquiring faster-than-light speeds remains largely conjectural. Types of Hyperluminal Travel Otherspace Travel The Raion Consortium utilizes a method of faster-than-light travel utilizes otherspace, a dimension described as "below the Ether" in terms of positioning. While most other civilizations totter about, flinging themselves everywhere by manipulating spacetime or integrating dimensions, the Aetanii shunt into otherspace, a plane that can be described as "absolute neutrality". Nothing exists within otherspace, including such fundamental concepts as time, distance, and velocity: the only things that can be said to exist are the things brought into it. Aetanii are able to use otherspace to drop into gravity wells within star systems, due to the positioning of otherspace: the further a dimension is removed from realspace, the less impact the gravitational shadow of a body in realspace has on it. However, this does not apply to such things as singularities, which have been called "holes drilled into the weeding cake of reality". Ether Travel Ether travel is a form of superluminal travel that is quite uncommon, most notably used by the Rin Empire and Razorbird Empire. It is achieved by ripping a hole through the skin of reality and having a ship enter The Ether and travel through it and emerge once again in realspace. One way of doing this is with Cyrus Crystals, as used by the Rin Empire. The process requires a competent psychic to protect the ship in The Ether against the psychic entities that reside there. Some routes between systems are easier to make than others, and the most common are often called "hyperlanes", though this travel is not exclusive to them, but travel outside of them takes more energy and effort and is more dangerous. This type of hyperluminal travel is quite fast but somewhat unreliable, as ships regularly dive into The Ether and are never seen again. The Razorbird method is strange and esoteric, they do not seem to require a psychic, nor do they follow hyperlanes of any sort. These drives have allowed them to even exit FTL within a gravity well. Wormhole Travel Wormhole FTL travel uses wormholes (obviously) to traverse great distances, these being points in spacetime folded as to be connected. It is fairly rare, as the technology required is very advanced and planning a new course requires an astounding amount of computing power, but it is excellent at travelling shorter distances or in times of war, as it is fast, reliable and efficient, but severely limited in range, as longer distances quickly make it much harder to compute and energy consuming. The most notable users of this type of hyperluminal travel are The Old and their respective allies/client states, as well as The Hive Collective, which use them to create a huge network of 'interstellar highways'. Unfortunately, this method of travel is unavailable to the people of the Milky Way, nor can any extragalactic entities use wormholes there, due to the interference of the enigmatic entities called Ghosts. Warp Travel Warp travel bends the very fabric of reality itself to circumvent c and essentially moves the space around the object and not the object itself. It is among the most reliable and ubiquitous methods. For more information, see here . Category:Starships Category:Pan-Faction Technologies